


Languages

by Belphegor



Series: Carnahan-O'Connells musings and snapshots [4]
Category: The Mummy Series
Genre: Family, Gen, musings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:22:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22114057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Belphegor/pseuds/Belphegor
Summary: A person is (among other things) a sum of everything they've experienced and learned so far, and for some people more than others, languages can be a pretty big part of that sum.The Carnahan-O'Connell family all speak more than one language, for different reasons.
Series: Carnahan-O'Connells musings and snapshots [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1557865
Comments: 9
Kudos: 37





	Languages

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mitdemadlerimherzen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitdemadlerimherzen/gifts).



They all speak Arabic to some extent, with varying degrees of competence.

Rick is the one who is closest to fluent, having lived in North Africa for over fifteen years; his Arabic is mainly Egyptian, with a lot of Moroccan expressions and some Algerian thrown in. For him, it’s a skill he had to pick up, like his knowledge of gold, silver and general treasure. Besides, he likes being able to tell when someone wants to kill him or reassure someone he means no harm.

He picked up French in the Foreign Legion, though generally not the kind you can use in polite company, and if the occasion calls for it can swear in about half a dozen languages, including Russian, Italian, Spanish, and German. He generally sticks to English curse words for Evy’s and later Alex’s sake, and for all that he does his best to keep his language clean – more or less – Alex delights in picking up things he definitely shouldn’t. Unfortunately (kind of), the lack of practice means that once Alex is old enough to be responsible for his own swearing, Rick has forgotten most of his foreign profanities.

Evy’s and Jonathan’s mother often spoke Arabic with them, and they picked it up naturally; since her death, Evy studied it, and as a result speaks good Arabic with a very academic feel to it – it’s almost Literary Arabic with a trace of Egyptian accent. Sometimes it bothers her a little.

She can decipher Latin or Ancient Greek quite decently provided she has a good dictionary on hand, and can hold basic conversation in French, but she never took to these languages like she took to Ancient Egyptian. She kept a journal at Oxford – which was _not_ a diary, thank you very much – in which she periodically wrote notes and impressions in Demotic to keep it safe from prying eyes. She still does, sometimes, more out of habit than anything.

Jonathan’s accent sounds a lot like his mother’s when he speaks Arabic, which can surprise someone who doesn’t know him well; he kept it after his parents’ deaths and he and Evy moved to Cairo through hanging around bars and haggling in bazaars. He doesn’t do too badly, but he lacks his sister’s extended vocabulary and ability to string sentences together.

A bona fide dilettante, he likes to brag he can order a drink almost anywhere in Europe and around the Mediterranean, which is not actually far from the truth. While his knowledge of languages like Turkish, Greek, or Polish boils down to “one beer, please” and “it wasn’t me”, he can actually hold decent conversation in French and Italian and knows enough German to know when it’s time to cut and run. Learning languages as a self-preservation technique is something he has in common with Rick.

Alex is still learning; for the moment he can understand Arabic much better than he can speak it, and his knowledge of the language is pretty much restricted to simple words and expressions like “hello/goodbye”, “please”, “thank you”, and “I didn’t do it” (guess who taught him that one). He gets to practice with Ardeth when they see him; Ardeth is very patient, but refuses to teach him any swear word at all, which Alex finds frustrating sometimes.

Unlike his parents and uncle, who for different reasons speak Arabic but don’t write it much, he shows an early affinity for calligraphy, and becomes quite good with the flowing cursive styles. His grandmother would be so proud, Evy thinks, and as much as it makes her heart ache she’s glad that Salwa Carnahan’s grandson carries some of her legacy.

**Author's Note:**

> I speak French (my mother tongue) and English fairly equally, plus a tiny bit of Italian and Spanish; my maternal grandparents spoke [Landes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landes_\(department\)) patois (one of them, anyway) and my paternal grandparents spoke Basque (some of my great-grandparents never spoke a single word of French in their lives) but I was denied the chance to learn as a kid. Languages and the speaking thereof are Very Important to me.


End file.
